Background Music
by petrarchan1008
Summary: Summary: For people who have ever wondered why Kelsi writes songs but never sings them herself. Kelsicentric fiction because sometimes the people in the background have interesting stories to tell.  Onesided Trelsi  Troyellasafe


Background Music

Summary: For people who have ever wondered why Kelsi writes songs but never sings them herself. Kelsi-centric fiction because sometimes the people in the background have interesting stories to tell, if only other people listened close enough. One-sided Trelsi / Troyella.

Disclaimer: I do not own High School Musical

Author's Note: I think that High School Musical presented a lot of clichés but I couldn't help watching it because life's like that sometimes. It could be as predictable as a cliché and other times, even if it is so, these things cease to be commonplace as imagined from the point-of-view of the secondary characters as they see things unfolding from a different angle. It is precisely this why I find Kelsi interesting because as predictable as the plot and the other character may be and as predictable as her situation could be (think Dawson's Creek, Cosette of Les Miserables, etc.), everyone is sad in their own way. Also, this was begging to be written before I can continue on with my Smallville fanfics which is my topmost passion.

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It's been 14 years since the pinnacle of my life – the winter musical. I think it's the only time wherein it seemed that the world was suffused with color and music. So much so that it bubbled over and I got caught up in the kaleidoscopic dreams of those around me. Making me believe that I could borrow the happy bugles and hues to decorate my life but like all things borrowed, there comes a time when you have to give it back to its rightful owner. Do I regret it? Most days I don't. Then again some days are harder than others. Music seems incongruous to my life right now. For the sole reason that it just seems so pure, innocent and naïve relative to this grown-up world of bills, duties and obligations. I'm a manager for one NYSE listed company responsible for warehousing operations. These days, the only thing that I orchestrate is the movement of stocks on the floor. I figured that it was time for me to put childish dreams to rest. This is my life now but before this, music was my life. It has always been the one thing constant. I don't exactly remember when I started writing first or what the event was. The only thing I remember is why. How I stumbled into it accidentally and how it saved me from just disappearing into the woodwork.

I first started to write music in order to fill up the colossal silence that threatened to usurp every aspect of my life. See, my mom was one of those popular brainiacs in high school. You know those types who were beautiful and smart at the same time and so had an unspoken pass to move through the various cliques that pretty much defined high school then and now. Funny, how that goes, how it is different and the same even now. So I guess my mom could never understand why I never fit in. Well for starters I didn't really look like her. Even when she was a gawky teenager, you just know that she was a stunner. Even without spending a dime on tanning salons, she had this rich olive complexion that looked like the sun breathed a kiss towards her and defined cheekbones that reminded me of those busts of Egyptian princesses they feature in National Geographic. At night back when I was eight or so, I would take her picture from the fireplace and bring it to my room and set it on my boudoir where I'd spend hours sucking my cheeks in the hope that one day I'd metamorphosis into her. If my mom was a beauty, my dad was the popular and dashing quarterback. They met in school but my dad said that it wasn't her beauty or her brains that first got his attention. He said that he was smitten the moment he heard her sing. Everyone said that she sang like an angel. Not that I would know. I was too young and by the time I arrived, there was not much to sing about in our house.

I sort of took after both my mom and dad – only I picked the worst things to inherit. I got his nose, my mom's height and lips, my dad's curly hair and goggle eyes. Individually, these things probably looked great on them but just didn't do much for me. When I was four, my mom would get a clothespin and make me wear it for hours on my nose just to "correct" it as if it were some offending defect like a lisp or bow-leggedness. Then there was my older sister, Kirsten. My breath-taking sister, Kirsten with her long dark hair and green iridescent eyes. She was the spitting image of mom. As we grew up, I knew that she was the beauty of the family. You know when there are sisters and one was supposed to be great beauty and the other one would have the brain? Well I was supposed to be the brainy one but there must have been some mix up because Kirsten was the one who had grades that could get her into Mensa. The only thing about me is that I'm ordinary. My memories of childhood were just as ordinary as I was except for the one day when I turned ten. My dad left my mom and ran off with this other partner in his firm. It was on my birthday and I was waiting for him to come home so I could cut the cake. He never came. I may have started writing music then I can't really say for sure but one thing I do remember was that on that day my mom stopped singing altogether. She took all our records and donated it to the local library. My dad aside from being quite the athlete lived for music as well. Obviously, one of the other things we shared, which every time I indulged in felt like a betrayal to my mom so I was careful not to sing or play music when she could hear it. Anyway, ever since that day though, it's like my mom barely acknowledged that I existed, like my being there was a personal affront. May be I reminded her too much of dad or may be because I've always lived in the shadow of Kirsten. Either way, I was just a fixture – someone that lived in our house but someone she never really saw. And so that's why I started writing music because it seemed that as they lived their lives, I lived on its fringes and out there, there was nothing but silence.

Four years later, I entered high school. Because of music, I got to hang out with Sharpay and Ryan Evans. What can I say about the Evans? Well they're the ones, who you know off the bat, lived in a world where they were always at the center of things, especially Sharpay. There was not a guy in school who didn't have some crush on her. She was its czarina and Ryan was her right-hand man because though Ryan was just as good-looking and talented as his sister, it was Troy Bolton who ruled East High. Truth be told, when I first entered high school, I had the teensiest crush on Ryan but that changed sometime around sophomore year. A couple of football jocks knocked my books off my hands in the cafeteria and were being the jerks that some jocks could be, It was Troy who told them off even if I was uncertain whether he ever knew me seeing that he has never talked to me before. He helped me pick up all my books and said, "Hey, you okay?" I nod wordlessly. Troy smiles as he says, "Stay away from tackling the quarterback next time okay Kelsi," before moving on to his friends' table. While I was looking up at his retreating form, sitting on the greasy cafeteria floor, I didn't mind because he knew that I existed, he even knew my name when most of the time I was just the girl who hang out with the Drama department. The sun was streaming through the windows and I couldn't have been any happier. I remember, it was at that moment exactly when I started writing music other than to fill the silence. I wrote music to fill the silence for Troy Bolton. I imagined that in my songs, I was just as courageous as him, just as blessed, just as talented and beautiful, just a little bit less invisible. In my songs, I deserved him as I spilled out all the things I have left unsaid. I continued writing music then but it lacked something somehow – like it was incomplete since I could never bring myself to sing it. I was scared because what was it that was said in that movie with Janeane Garofalo, "Disappointment maims but rejection kills"? Well, I wasn't ready to find out if there was any truth to that. May be tomorrow or the day after that, I'd find the courage to say all this to him up front. Then days turned to weeks and weeks into months. Finally in junior year, Gabriella breezed in. She sort of reminded me of Kirsten and they were so perfect together. Here was Troy who practically was the king of East High and Gabriella was his queen and nothing could've made more sense than that. Somehow, the music that I made seemed perfect when she sang it and so it came to be that she sang the songs I made for the boy that saved me that day in the cafeteria. But even as she sang with Troy onstage every night and even as Troy sang to her the words I had dreamt of hearing, in my heart, it was me singing it with him. At that time, that was enough for me. I knew then as I now know, nothing could have come out of it. I harbored neither illusions nor ill-will. He was happy and so was I in an outside-looking in kind of way.

So fourteen years have passed and while I've put all my music behind me locked away in the attic of my childhood home, I have pretended to go through the motions of moving on, going forward and I was successful in building that up. Most days I am capable of accepting what I have. Then there are days when I play other people's sad songs because it's easier to sing them than write my own. What does it matter if the song is mine anyway? I can't write any more songs because I have come to realize that I gave Troy all of my music and I don't have enough left for myself. Then one day, he comes and visits me. I've always prided in being sensible but hope is like an annoying song that I thought I've managed to turn off but suddenly starts playing again in my head. So as he sits there across my desk, I had hoped that he was there because of me. Because he realized that it was me singing all those songs with him all these years and as we laugh about old times and dust off our memories of high school and the people we shared it with, he then turns quiet and looks at me. The sun streams into my window and it gives off little flecks of gold in his green eyes. For a moment there, I was back on that greasy cafeteria floor and he was there holding his hand out to me. Only this time, his hands weren't empty. He was holding out an invitation to me.

"Kelsi, I'd like to thank you for all those songs you wrote for us." He looks at me fondly and I know that this is goodbye. I hear requiems in the distance and still I sit there benignly, indulgently like a fairy godmother smiling at the happy ending of the prince and the princess while he continues on, "I think we fell in love with your music in the background and if it were not for that, I may have gone on completely blind to the happiness that could've been mine. So I came here to ask you, as it is fitting enough, if you could write a wedding song for Gabriella and me? It would be such an honor. I know you've stopped doing that but having your song play at our wedding, would make it complete somehow. Could you please?"

I blink my tears away and smile even wider in an attempt to say that I'm okay with this, that this was not as difficult as I imagined it to be. Funny how other people's happiness can cloak and mask other people's despair. Incapable of any other response, I nod with as much enthusiasm I could muster, "Sure. Let me get started on it right away."

He goes around my desk and engulfs me in a hug. He kisses the top of my head and I imagine wearing his happiness for that one moment, pretending not to hear my heart shatter like broken glass. He gently pulls me away from him and stares into my eyes,"Kels, thanks! You don't know what this means to us. Anyway, I have to go. I just have to tell Gabi the good news!"

He leaves, jabbering about a million other things which I never did quite hear. I laughed and nodded and though I may not remember when was the first time I wrote music, I will always remember the last.

FIN


End file.
